What's New with the MUSSELp?

The highlights of 2012.

30 November 2012 -- Pfeiffer Thesis Defense. John M. Pfeiffer III of the University of Alabama successfully defended his masters thesis, "Evolution of asymmetrical larvae in freshwater mussels (Bivalvia: Unionoida)." Click back thru the MUSSELp news of the last couple years, and you will see that John has been productive, as a sequencer of freshwater mussel specimens for BivAToL (the Bivalve Tree of Life), an avid photographer for the MUSSELp, and also as a researcher pursuing his own interests.

8 October 2012 -- MUSSELp Ten-Tennial 2002-2012. This week is the 10 year anniversary of the formation of the MUSSEL Project. On 7-8 October 2002, Kevin Cummings and Dan Graf got together in Champaign, IL to combine their databases of freshwater mussel diversity, and they submitted their first NSF grant together a few months later. The MUSSELp Web Site chronicles our goings-on over the last 120 months.

27 August 2012 -- MUSSELpws moves to UWSP. Beginning in this month, the MUSSEL Project Web Site is now hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. DLG has taken up a new post there as aquatic invertebrate biologist, and our web site has moved with him. Our thanks to the University of Alabama for hosting the MUSSELpws from 2008 to 2012.

The meeting was a great success, and Gary, Paul, Amanda, and everyone in the Malacology Department at the ANSP should be proud.

21-23 February 2012 -- American Fisheries Society in Illinois. INHS mussel folks KSC, Jeremy Tiemann, Sarah Bales, Alison Price, and Diane Shasteen attended the 50th Annual Meeting of the Illinois Chapter of the American Fisheries Society at Starved Rock Lodge 21-23 February 2012. Three papers and a poster were presented:

In addition, the mussel folks were front and center garnering awards from the 2011 Illinois AFS Meeting: the best professional paper went to Alison Price (her second in the past three years – take that fish heads) with co-authors, Sarah Bales & Diane Shasteen for her talk entitled Timed searches of freshwater mussels: what do samplers learn by the hour? and the best poster award went to Diane Shasteen with co-authors Sarah Bales & Alison Price for "Mega" mussels making "spectacles" of themselves in the Cache River. As part of the celebration of 50 years of IL AFS, it was announced that in the entire history of Illinois AFS meetings that the INHS has given the most talks. Jeremy Tiemann led the INHS scientists in that regard with 17 presentations.